Change Arises from Within
By
Bhashkar Perinchery
Bhashkar Perinchery
We need to see that each one of us is like a world in itself
Nobody is unwanted in this existence. You are not just accidentally in this life-process. Rather, you are part of this alive, dynamic, celebrative process of life: wanted and welcomed. Like in the Upanishad*, there is a saying: “Even if a blade of grass is missing, the whole existence will thirst for it.”
Become aware that your own happiness and future is your individual responsibility. Aliveness means being in touch with the “new” in each moment and each situation-indeed, that is what “learning” is all about!
Complaining about Others or Taking a Look at Oneself
In our society, many are caught in the habit of complaining about others and judging others. I encourage you to take a step back and consider whether you can change another person. And even if you could change a few people close to you, should the whole world behave according to your expectations? Is this possible or even desirable?
So, ask yourself: what is your real concern? Is your goal to educate the other or do you want to get clear inside yourself by confronting the irritations that might arise within you when others make different choices than you would.
It is easy for us to see the state of disorder and disharmony in somebody else because we have the benefit of some distance from the other person. However, we do not enjoy the same benefit of distance from ourselves. We may get bitter because of someone’s insensibility, but our holding onto the bitterness itself also is some kind of insensibility towards life that we do not consider or realize.
Stuck in Negativity or Being a Witness to Our Reactions
It is your deep and primary responsibility towards life not to get in any way into a negative state. Once you are in this state you will find many excuses, something has happened or a person has behaved in a certain way, and you may begin to justify being hurt and bitter because of something or someone else’s behavior.
Whatever happens, do not hold to a negative state in yourself. In subtle ways, the ego feeds off of negativity. And, if you are not negative, it might seem as if you are disappearing.
We are not here just to find fault with somebody else. We are here to understand ourselves and life more deeply. By pausing and reminding ourselves of this key purpose, we will attain deeper clarity about the subtle entanglements which would otherwise take over our life. Only when we are deeply honest about ourselves are we able to learn and to allow that which is valuable to become visible and reach us. Otherwise, we will find ourselves hiding behind the veil of “I am such and such a person and the reason I am (reacting) like this is because of someone else’s fault.”
Connecting to Others
When we take the time to understand and connect to the other more deeply, we are not limiting ourselves with judgments or assumptions such as “somebody is like this” or “somebody is like that,” or that “somebody is right” or “wrong,” etc. Instead, we begin to look at the situation or person from a different depth in us. Understand that this approach is not some blind acceptance of someone, nor is it condemning or blindly fighting the other. It is simply an acceptance-that we take the other as a fellow human being, trying to see how we can bring about the necessary sensibility to share and communicate deeply with the other.
This kind of communication is an art. It is where our heart, our fantasy, our imagination and our humor, as well as our understanding and knowledge, need to come into play. We need to see that each one of us is like a world in itself. We can attempt from our side to bridge and share, but finally it is left to the other what the other makes of it. We cannot change anybody and that should not be our effort.
We can share our experience and love with the other. But if in the course of it we ourselves become unclear and negative, we have to clear these factors in ourselves first rather than trying to share with the other. This inner clarity is the most important basis to be able to communicate creatively and intelligently with the other.
The natural and the automatic tendency is outward-oriented. But what you need, through your alertness and understanding, is to turn your attention inward. In Sanskrit* there are two expressions: the first, bahir mukhi, means you are facing outward; and the other, antar mukhi, means turning your attention inward. When you want to attain clarity, when you want to experience the divine, you have to turn your attention inward. And the awareness, which includes the outside and the inside, is a holistic awareness. That is the choiceless awareness which creates the basis for the possibility of an inner transformation.
Temptations to Impose the “Good” onto Others and Ourselves
Hitler wrote his biography with the title Mein Kampf (My Battle). The more one is entangled in this role, the bigger the struggle, and then one loses the whole perspective and becomes very destructive.
Intentions may be good, but intentions alone are not enough. Intention has to be combined with consciousness, because if someone has an intention that one thinks is good and tries to impose it, it can be very dangerous. When you have the idea that you are good and you are right, then you begin to lose sight of other options and the reality of this moment. It is a learning process of realizing that you need to go beyond the fixations of what the mind is showing and to allow yourself to see what life is showing.
It is important to note that we also do not need to try to change ourselves. The very effort of changing is trying to change the periphery. Let the change happen as your understanding becomes deep. Changing the periphery without the penetration into the deeper understanding will not really work.
You can change certain habits, such as not smoking, learning polite words while hiding your emotions. You can try from the outside to appear in a certain way, but if inside you continue holding to certain misunderstandings and settlements, clinging to them blindly, you cannot be free. Then all these outside changes will make you even more split. You will come to a point where you feel you have been sacrificing so much, and others should now be or at least agree on the same way. And as a result, you will feel even more justified to condemn, consider yourself holier, more special and greater than the others.
The Art of Change-Freedom from Fixation
Make yourself free from this identification with the personality, or the name or the form. In other words, you have to free yourself from what you imagine yourself to be, so that you can be truly who you are. Otherwise, whenever the energy is there, the mind pulls one into the old patterns, into the old ways of reacting and one just destroys oneself and the other with it.
Those who are addicted to certain approaches in their lives-who are accustomed to running after power and prestige, for example-will find their intent and actions heading in the wrong direction once they get into the position to act upon their power if they do not clear these fixations.
When you begin to notice something disturbing you, you do not need to automatically react. You can remain free from the suffering when inwardly you are able to observe your own reactions as they arise, as well as your identifications behind them. With this inner distance, you have the choice to follow or not to follow these reactions. That gives you freedom.
So it is a question of becoming responsible in a deep way towards oneself and towards the others as the understanding grows deeper.
One who is allowing life is simply responding without being caught in any fixation, and in these responses, he touches many factors and many people in different ways.
Nobody is unwanted in this existence. You are not just accidentally in this life-process. Rather, you are part of this alive, dynamic, celebrative process of life: wanted and welcomed. Like in the Upanishad*, there is a saying: “Even if a blade of grass is missing, the whole existence will thirst for it.”
Become aware that your own happiness and future is your individual responsibility. Aliveness means being in touch with the “new” in each moment and each situation-indeed, that is what “learning” is all about!
Complaining about Others or Taking a Look at Oneself
In our society, many are caught in the habit of complaining about others and judging others. I encourage you to take a step back and consider whether you can change another person. And even if you could change a few people close to you, should the whole world behave according to your expectations? Is this possible or even desirable?
So, ask yourself: what is your real concern? Is your goal to educate the other or do you want to get clear inside yourself by confronting the irritations that might arise within you when others make different choices than you would.
It is easy for us to see the state of disorder and disharmony in somebody else because we have the benefit of some distance from the other person. However, we do not enjoy the same benefit of distance from ourselves. We may get bitter because of someone’s insensibility, but our holding onto the bitterness itself also is some kind of insensibility towards life that we do not consider or realize.
Stuck in Negativity or Being a Witness to Our Reactions
It is your deep and primary responsibility towards life not to get in any way into a negative state. Once you are in this state you will find many excuses, something has happened or a person has behaved in a certain way, and you may begin to justify being hurt and bitter because of something or someone else’s behavior.
Whatever happens, do not hold to a negative state in yourself. In subtle ways, the ego feeds off of negativity. And, if you are not negative, it might seem as if you are disappearing.
We are not here just to find fault with somebody else. We are here to understand ourselves and life more deeply. By pausing and reminding ourselves of this key purpose, we will attain deeper clarity about the subtle entanglements which would otherwise take over our life. Only when we are deeply honest about ourselves are we able to learn and to allow that which is valuable to become visible and reach us. Otherwise, we will find ourselves hiding behind the veil of “I am such and such a person and the reason I am (reacting) like this is because of someone else’s fault.”
Connecting to Others
When we take the time to understand and connect to the other more deeply, we are not limiting ourselves with judgments or assumptions such as “somebody is like this” or “somebody is like that,” or that “somebody is right” or “wrong,” etc. Instead, we begin to look at the situation or person from a different depth in us. Understand that this approach is not some blind acceptance of someone, nor is it condemning or blindly fighting the other. It is simply an acceptance-that we take the other as a fellow human being, trying to see how we can bring about the necessary sensibility to share and communicate deeply with the other.
This kind of communication is an art. It is where our heart, our fantasy, our imagination and our humor, as well as our understanding and knowledge, need to come into play. We need to see that each one of us is like a world in itself. We can attempt from our side to bridge and share, but finally it is left to the other what the other makes of it. We cannot change anybody and that should not be our effort.
We can share our experience and love with the other. But if in the course of it we ourselves become unclear and negative, we have to clear these factors in ourselves first rather than trying to share with the other. This inner clarity is the most important basis to be able to communicate creatively and intelligently with the other.
The natural and the automatic tendency is outward-oriented. But what you need, through your alertness and understanding, is to turn your attention inward. In Sanskrit* there are two expressions: the first, bahir mukhi, means you are facing outward; and the other, antar mukhi, means turning your attention inward. When you want to attain clarity, when you want to experience the divine, you have to turn your attention inward. And the awareness, which includes the outside and the inside, is a holistic awareness. That is the choiceless awareness which creates the basis for the possibility of an inner transformation.
Temptations to Impose the “Good” onto Others and Ourselves
Hitler wrote his biography with the title Mein Kampf (My Battle). The more one is entangled in this role, the bigger the struggle, and then one loses the whole perspective and becomes very destructive.
Intentions may be good, but intentions alone are not enough. Intention has to be combined with consciousness, because if someone has an intention that one thinks is good and tries to impose it, it can be very dangerous. When you have the idea that you are good and you are right, then you begin to lose sight of other options and the reality of this moment. It is a learning process of realizing that you need to go beyond the fixations of what the mind is showing and to allow yourself to see what life is showing.
It is important to note that we also do not need to try to change ourselves. The very effort of changing is trying to change the periphery. Let the change happen as your understanding becomes deep. Changing the periphery without the penetration into the deeper understanding will not really work.
You can change certain habits, such as not smoking, learning polite words while hiding your emotions. You can try from the outside to appear in a certain way, but if inside you continue holding to certain misunderstandings and settlements, clinging to them blindly, you cannot be free. Then all these outside changes will make you even more split. You will come to a point where you feel you have been sacrificing so much, and others should now be or at least agree on the same way. And as a result, you will feel even more justified to condemn, consider yourself holier, more special and greater than the others.
The Art of Change-Freedom from Fixation
Make yourself free from this identification with the personality, or the name or the form. In other words, you have to free yourself from what you imagine yourself to be, so that you can be truly who you are. Otherwise, whenever the energy is there, the mind pulls one into the old patterns, into the old ways of reacting and one just destroys oneself and the other with it.
Those who are addicted to certain approaches in their lives-who are accustomed to running after power and prestige, for example-will find their intent and actions heading in the wrong direction once they get into the position to act upon their power if they do not clear these fixations.
When you begin to notice something disturbing you, you do not need to automatically react. You can remain free from the suffering when inwardly you are able to observe your own reactions as they arise, as well as your identifications behind them. With this inner distance, you have the choice to follow or not to follow these reactions. That gives you freedom.
So it is a question of becoming responsible in a deep way towards oneself and towards the others as the understanding grows deeper.
One who is allowing life is simply responding without being caught in any fixation, and in these responses, he touches many factors and many people in different ways.